Lyubena|Pictures

My name is Lyubena, pronounced [lü:bena], but everyone just calls me Lyu [lü:].
In the past five years, my husband (a wonderful Italian man) and I have lived in Budapest, Milan, Paris and since we February 2017 we reside in East Bay, California.
We have the great happiness to be traveling for both work and leisure. One of my favourite things while traveling is photographing, meeting great new people and collecting urban legends. This blog is all about this.

One of our first trips in Northern California happened to be in the Monterey area. We spent the Memorial Day long weekend driving around Monterey, Carmel-by-the-Sea and Pacific Grove. Here there are some postcards from this journey.

In December we had to take yet another life decision. When you have to choose between two almost equally good opportunities, there is no choice but to take the one with less disadvantages and immediately forget about all of them when the decision is taken. […]

We took a 9.05 morning flight to Basel to arrive there around 10am. The hotel we have chosen for our stay was The Passage – a wonderful silent location, near the hear of the city with essential bright rooms and delicious breakfast. Basel is very […]

Last writing pause lasted quite a bit, but here I am back with a list of favourite things for April and May. Going back home May was preceded by a fantastic warm week back in Bulgaria. One week spring break was the right time to […]

Cold wind roars from the North. One wants to draw their scarf over their head. The old houses by the port of Honfleur draw up a line huddling together to protect from the wind. With their facades in colour, they remind elementary school students preparing […]

Swimming suits are long ago hidden in the back of the wardrobe. Days are getting shorter and we are getting busier. Vacantion is over, but pretty pictures and sweet memories are reminding us about our wonderful time in Mallorca. The biggest of the Balearic islands welcomed […]

In a process of acquiring a new language, vocabulary boils down to three main categories: words that mind erases completely by the time we close the books and leave the writing table. words that stick to the top of the tongue, playfully chaffing our memory, […]

Being a spotter for Milan for the brilliant Spotted by Locals I had the chance to share my favourite places in the city of Milan with locals and visitors for quite a while. For updated, interesting tips about Milan, go check Spotted by Locals/Milan.

If you are looking for more hidden corners, check out my blog post on the hidden courtyards of via Borgonuovo!

Since I recently moved to Paris, here I decided to make a last tribute to some of my ultimate favourites there.

Two years in Milan slipped out unnoticed and I realised that I have never visited any place in Piedmont. Since recently we were always back and forth between Paris and Milan before the big move in two weeks, it was quite difficult to organise an […]

On the contrary with the seasonal Best of the year summaries appearing all around in the last hours of the year I am listing my pleasures for the month. Apartment in Paris Found. It took time and emotional investment to research apartments in 15e and […]

If someone had told me several years ago that by the end of 2014 we would be on the way to move to Paris I would have been sceptical. But c’est la vie and here I am hunting an apartment to turn in our lovenest […]

I have always been fascinated with languages lessons. For the simple pleasure of acquisition of laborious grammatical construction. For the plain lexical satisfaction. Like a toddler, praised by its parents for the first correct sentence I feel utterly fulfilled by being able to say Alors, […]

September list of Pleasures City of Thieves by David Benioff I spent a week leafing trough the adventures of the half-Jew Lev and the young soldier Kolya on the way to accomplishing their secret mission: to find a dozen of eggs in time of war. […]

After two years of sweet family life Rob and I decided it’s a high time to make our belated honeymoon come true. Curiosity for Southeast Asia and love for spicy food shifted the needle of our compass towards the distant lands of Bali and after […]

Dear San Francisco, Perhaps you are now still under the blankets of your bed overlooking the beautiful morning cityscape captured in the frame of your window, or you are already having a cup of your long brewed coffee, planning to meet some friends for brunch […]

An exact 3-hour journey by train brought me to Bern. The road was meandering between hills, lake shores, the pages of my book and several words exchanged with the traveler adjacent to me. I had a blue sky day ahead and a lovely scenery to […]

My great-grandfather ran a caravanserai, an inn, where traders and pedlars used to lodge when coming in town on market days. Accommodation and warm food were provided not only for their owners, but also for the horses in some nicely organised stables. The place was […]

Courtyards always used to be attractive to me. To sneak in the lit up by the sun inner ground, to smell the mysterious aroma mixture of: a) onion and tomato dish that is being prepared for lunch b) the mould from the dark humid walls […]

Crystal clear blue sky with occasional cotton-white clouds, long days and atmosphere of an approaching national holiday welcomed us in the city of Barcelona. Hundreds of words are written and said about the natural, architectural or gastronomical wonders of the Catalan capital. So, one is […]

The first image emerging in my mind before the term factory town used to have much in common with a hostile location, ghost streets, unhappiness. The Italian workers village Crespi D’adda managed to break these personal myths of mine. Crespi D’adda was built in the […]

I remember reading Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence, cuddled in bed in the cosy apartment of our kind host Matyás when my friend Visha and I just moved to Szeged. Turning page after page in those sunny autumn mornings I was taking a storytelling […]

The notebook is your little room. A phrase that keeps reverberating in my mind for a long time. I have been always into paper and notebooks. I have been using them since I learned to write properly to collect a random list of useful phrases […]